A large and colorful member of the sparrow family, the Green-tailed towhee is perhaps more recognizable by its eye-catching chestnut crown than by its less intense green-gray back and olive tail.

As a ground forager, it spends most of its time on the ground or in thick cover, scratching about industriously in the leaf litter, and it may go unnoticed. But its catlike mewing call, which it often gives from a brushy perch, is one of the quintessential sounds of the shrublands of the east slope of the Cascades and the Great Basin.

It is locally fairly common east of the Cascades in summer and the most common in the north Great Basin, where it is found in nearly all mountain ranges.

Photo by Simon Wray, ODFW